Printer Friendly Version - Medical Career Day at the Shoreline Clinic

Carey Willets shows Marisa Romano and Hannah Brown what to look for when drawing blood.

Seventy-eight students from local high schools, including Valley Regional, Old Saybrook, Westbrook, Morgan, Haddam-Killingworth, and Lyme-Old Lyme recently participated in Career Day at the Shoreline Medical Center in Essex.

The program started when longtime nurse Rhonda Forristall was asked to talk to a high school class about nursing. How much better, she thought, to demonstrate to students the variety of medical careers open to them? So, nearly a decade ago, she and Kathy Gintoff organized the Career Day program. It is the only one of its kind in the entire state, according to Forristall.

Student groups rotated between eight stations, where Middlesex Hospital personnel gave them a chance to experience different medical specialties, from interpreting X-rays to testing blood samples for the sugar levels that indicate diabetes. For many of the participants, one of the highlights of the program was practicing surgical stitches on pig's feet under the guidance of physician's assistant Joseph Castro.

Students also learned how to draw blood, inserting a needle into a rubber arm and, using a full-size mannequin, how to intubate a victim having trouble breathing.

"It's wonderful kids are exposed hands-on to so many aspects of medical careers," said Mary Hambor, school-to-career counselor at Valley Regional.

Karim Abdel-Jalil, a Westbrook student, said he was interested in pediatrics, but was impressed by the variety of options the program presented.

"Some of this stuff is really cool," he said, as listened to Christine Marsilio and Shawn Healy talk about X-ray technology.

This year's program is bittersweet for Forristall. After 42 years as a nurse, she is retiring in June. She was giving pointers to Joseph Pucillo, who will take over management of the program. Still, Pucillo won't have to go it alone. Forristall vows she will be back to help next year.

Using pig's feet to demonstrate suturing techniques, Val Marchant coaches Amy Wendefweng through the knotting process.

R.N. Tina Conlin and Janet Whaley reenact an infant emergency scenario to give students a glimpse at the emergency room decision-making process.

X-ray technician Christine Marsilio exhibited a variety of X-rays, from broken bones to those of people who swallowed a screw and an open safety pin to a bullet fracture, and even an image of a mummy the facility was asked to X-ray.